Five miles below the Falls, Mr. Lee and myself left the canoe, and struck across about fourteen miles to an Indian village on the bank of the Columbia opposite Vancouver. It was a collection of mud and straw huts, surrounded and filled with filth which might be smelt two hundred yards. We hired one of these cits to take us across the river, and at sunset of the 15th, were comfortably seated by the stove in "Bachelor's Hall" of Fort Vancouver.
The rainy season had now thoroughly set in. Travelling any considerable distance in open boats, or among the tangled underbrush on foot, or on horseback, was quite impracticable. I therefore determined to avail myself of whatever other means of information were in my reach; and as the gentlemen in charge of the various trading-posts {220} in the territory, had arrived at Vancouver to meet the express from London, I could not have had for this object a more favourable opportunity. The information obtained from these gentlemen, and from other residents in the country, I have relied on as correct, and combined it with my own observations in the following general account of Oregon.
Oregon Territory is bounded on the north by the parallel of 54 deg. 40 min. north latitude;[20] on the east by the Rocky Mountains; on the south by the parallel of 42 deg. north latitude; and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.
Mountains of Oregon. Different sections of the great chain of highlands which stretch from the straits of Magellan to the Arctic sea, have received different names—as the Andes, the Cordilleras, the Anahuac, the Rocky and the Chippewayan Mountains. The last mentioned appellation has been applied to that portion of it which lies between 58° of north latitude and the Arctic sea. The Hudson Bay Company, in completing the survey of the
